, an online platform designed to connect customers to fishermen that is now selling to individuals. We’ve been trying to replicate meals we would previously only have had out: wild sea bass, a foot and a half long; chops piled Blacklock-style onto flatbread. The elite Cornish butcherhas opened “On the Pass”, an area of its online shop where you can order cuts that were destined for Brat, the Ledbury, Ikoyi or Kiln.
The truth is that I expected to miss restaurants more than I do. With a bit of distance, more meals than I’d like to admit look like a waste of money. How easy it is, in central London at least, to spend £100 and instantly forget about it. Then there are the ingredients. Traditionally, part of a restaurant’s appeal has been having access to delicacies that simply aren’t available to the rest of us.
When I imagine the first meal out in a restaurant after all this is over, it’s easier to say what it won’t be. It won’t be over-fussy little plates of dishes designed to show off. I won’t be sitting crammed along a bar or at a sharing table with strangers. I won’t be handing over my credit card details in advance or being rushed into giving my table back before I’ve finished or enduring any “concepts”.
I crave old-style hospitality, generous and warm and inviting, rather than audacious flavours or technical showboating. As the universe has shrunk to the area within half an hour’s walk of the house, I am thinking more locally, too.